Ok, so not really.  But I do make fun of people who do.

I have to tell you a funny story of these sunglasses here on the left though.

I bought them on Friday night at this cool vintage store while on a date with The Hubs.  I feel cool wearing them…even when I haven’t brushed my hair or have make-up on (like in this picture that I can’t believe I’m posting on the internet.)  All to say, I like them…even if you think that they’re huge and make me look like a fly…I don’t care…I like them.

Anyhow it was SO hot on Friday night when we were walking around downtown and when we went into this store it was nice and air-conditioned.  I perused a bit and bought a shirt to send to my brother on the aircraft carrier.  When I went up to pay there was a big case with loads of awesome looking aviators, so I tried this pair on…and then the following conversation ensued between myself and the guy at the register.

Guy: “Here you go”

Me: “Thanks….Wow!  I’m so hot that the glasses are fogging!”

Guy:  “Yeah!  they do look really good….that’s an awesome way to think about it.”

Me (realizing what he thought I meant): “NO!!!  I mean literally my forehead is emitting so much heat that the glasses actually fogged!”

Let’s just say we both had a really hilarious laugh at that point.  He thought I was being arrogant…you and I just know that I have a serious case of verbal diarrhea.

Then he asked if I wanted the glasses in a bag or if I wanted to wear them and I said “I’m not one of those people who can wear my sunglasses at night.  Are you?”

Guy: “No.”

Me:”Seriously though, can anyone really pull of wearing sunglasses at night?  I think not.”

Guy:  “No….noone can.  It’s ridiculous.”

So…there you have it….unless you’re Corey Hart and wrote a song about it that people still love in secret and hate in public, you really shouldn’t do it either.  Some things just aren’t meant to actually be done. 

Sometimes I wonder if the title is the dirty little hook that makes more of you come over and read than you normally would?  If so, then I bet your human curiosity jumped you right here faster than normal.

I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t have a sordid tale of marital unfaithfulness wrought with awfulness and redemption to tell you.  About the worst side of cheating I’ve experienced personally was with a boyfriend in college who broke my heart into a million pieces when he told me he’d gotten some other girl pregnant and didn’t think it necessary to tell me about it until after the baby was a month old….on Father’s Day nonetheless.  I think all I did was cry to realize he’d cheated in the first place and then lied to me for an entire gestational period, but what I’ve always wished I’d said was “well, Happy Freaking Father’s Day to you!”

I didn’t say that though.

And I guess the other time I’ve felt cheating glare me in the face was walking with some friends through an affair that one of them had several years ago.  Next to losing babies, that was maybe one of the hardest things I’ve walked through in my life.  I do want to add that particular relationship has spent years on the road to beautiful restoration…but I know that the wreckage of cheating can span far and wide.  Our relationships with them, while still hugely precious to me, have never been the same…and that makes me sad.

But today…I am feeling like the big cheater.  And though it can’t touch breaking of vows or months of long lies, I’m still feeling really horrible.

I had great intentions to blog alot while at the beach this week.  To type up some posts to even have a backlog for when I skip a day writing here and there.  Obviously, you’ve probably noticed by now that those intentions paved the way to nowhere.

But here’s what I’ve realized about myself, and about my blog…I’m probably always going to try to spend my holidays actually “on holiday.”  I’ve always in some small part of myself wished that I was one of those people who could use nouns like verbs more often and do things like “summer,” and “winter” somewhere.  An extended vacation that really just gets to consume an entire season so that the seasonal noun becomes your verb of choice…but I’m not one of those people, so for now I’m going to take the small handful of days that the calender affords me and actually “holiday” on the holiday.

I busted my tail to blog when I was in Montana, and it was fun too, but this vacation has left me wanting to take a nap in the afternoons, or to sit on the beach an extra hour while my kids are napping.  To get unplugged and stay that way loner than normal.  I’m not really gonna drag my laptop onto the beach and give myself a square shaped tanline on my legs just to fire out a post.  I hope you’ll still read here though…and I hope that when I take a break, you won’t hold it against me and forget to stop by here anymore.

May be one day I’ll get myself in gear and blog way in advance and you’ll get a “Happy Thanksgiving” post on Thanksgiving…or a “Merry Christmas” post on Christmas.  My guess is though that most of you reading are doing the same thing that I am though which doesn’t involve being on the computer when you happen to get an extra fun day off to spend with your family.

I have just two more days of vacation and then it’s a 12 hour drive back home with my parents and 2 children…and if that’s not a springboard back into reality, then I don’t know what is?!

So…Happy June 31st, July 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th.

 – Logan

Don’t forget to send a sailor some love this month.  This month’s “Blogging from the Bush” serviceman to write and send carepackages to is Landon Lane on the aircraft carrier the George H. W. Bush.

His address is
AD3 Lane, Landon
VFA-15
Unit 60413
FPO AE 09504-6201

PS.  Standard mail and shipping rates apply…there’s no need for any extra postage than normal.

I have a confession.  I haven’t posted the letter from my Navy Sailor brother yet because I’ve been hemming and hawing over if the total blunt truth straight from the mouth of a semi-salty sailor would put you all over the edge with me.

I’ve sent the letter to a couple of friends to gauge their reactions and we all agree it’s completely and harshly stereotypical of sailors, females on board, and human behaviors in general.  The letter contains a lot of truths, some hilarious exaggerations, some offensive generalizations, and a dose of real life on an aircraft carrier for months on end.  That being said….here it is.  If you hate it, don’t hate me.  If you love it, send my brother a carepackage.  If you think his letter is offensive but still appreciate the fact that he’s out there on a boat for months away from friends and family, send him a letter?  A nice one?! 🙂

A few things you should know:  My brother calls me Gogie, I call him Buds.  He is a great and decent guy with a fantastic sense of humor.  I love him to death and if you say anything mean about him, well…do it elsewhere.  This is my blog and I’ll not tolerate anyone hating on my family.  Remember my post the other day?! He wrote this letter June 14th…I’ve been sitting on it that long.  That being said…here you go. 

You know I’ve mentioned before that I’m the Care Coordinator for my neighborhood, right?  Well, this past week one of my sweet neighbors had a death in the family, so it’s my job to make sure they have some meals, a card, flowers, etc.

This particular neighbor didn’t really want lots of meals throughout this week because there are just 2 of them, so I came up with the idea to have neighbors make frozen casseroles, lasagna, etc and drop them off to me to take over all at once today.   This way they’ll have meals for when they need them, but don’t have a barrage of people coming every day either.

The upside of this role for me has been seeing some neighbors who I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting before.

Night before last, a neighbor I’d never met came by to drop off some food, and we got to have a really nice visit.  The Hubs had been out in the yard doing work and had just come in and showered off.  He threw on some wear-around-the-house kind of clothes and came downstairs just about the time I was meeting this neighbor.  Of course he said “hello” and introduced himself and then he went about his business while I chatted with my neighbor.

Later when he and I sat down to eat (after our kids were in bed and the neighbor was gone,)  I looked across the table and noticed he had thrown on a tshirt that he got for free at a work conference.  It was a security software tshirt, and emblazoned across the front was this….

WOW.  Nice to meet you Barbara.  Hope you like “fast and easy” too…or at least aren’t offended after meeting us now!

Keepin’ it classy ya’ll.  Keepin’ it classy.

Oh ya’ll, today I had a moment.

I bet you were wondering how long it’d be before the crazy person in me decided to jump out and surprise us all again.  Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to wait too too long?  Yeah…sorry to say I guess I’m a little predictable like that.  But the crazy person made an appearance today for sure.  This time instead of a mother bear though, it was more like this….

About the time I saw them backing over the curb into my yard and taunting my dogs, I thought it was time to, you know…take the gloves off and have a nice little chat.

Ok. So I wrote the post about the weather last night, but am making an addition now here with some interesting things I came across today.

Eschatology…is basically the study of end times, and this morning when I was having some time with the Lord I most interestingly (but probably not coincidentally) ended up reading about eschatology.  I started out with some reading in Psalms because our church is reading through the Bible this year.  Somehow a cross reference ended me up in Matthew, and then my eye jumped from the cross reference to some verses that I had underlined on the opposite page.  So I ended up in Matthew 21:18-22 which talks about Jesus cursing the fig tree and willing it to wither and die.  Then subsequently he tells the disciples that if they have faith and do not doubt, then they can do like he did to the fig tree, they can command mountains to fall into the sea and it will happen.  That the things that we ask in prayer and believing, we will receive.

I have a thing about figs.  I’ve posted recipes with them before and will do more when fig season is upon us later this summer.  And I started thinking about how often I’ve noticed that figs turn up in scripture, and I got to wondering.  “What is the deal with figs?”

So i googled “fig tree” and also searched it on BibleGateway (which by the way is a really great, FREE resource for different Bible translations, does searches…it’s awesome.)  I found 49 instances where figs were referenced in the Bible.  Many of those references point to figs being a symbol of prosperity in Biblical times.  And then i looked up figs on Wikipedia as well to learn more about them.  That ended me up reading about the Parable of the Barren Fig tree that I just told you about, and from that reading about Figs in the Bible.  Figs are mentioned in what is called The Olivet Discourse which is a biblical passage found in the Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21. Apparently it is sometimes referred to as the “Little Apocalypse” because it includes Jesus’ descriptions of the end times.  So you see how this happened?  Psalms to figs to end times?
 
I know…it’s a serious Biblical ADD…or maybe just what I was supposed to be reading today after posting about the weather and end times last night.  So then I started reading all around about end times and eschatology and tribulation and views on it all, and I determined something….

I don’t know about the rest of you and what the weather is like where you live, but it’s been crazy around South Carolina the past couple of months.  And from what I can tell on the news, across the rest of the country it’s been pretty crazy too.  There have been record numbers of tornadoes, floods, winds, and storms pretty much everywhere.  I have lived the majority of my life in the Carolinas and until about a month ago, in the Carolinas I have never seen THIS.

I was out riding bikes with my family for about 20 minutes last night and stopped to talk to a neighbor.  In about 5 minutes, the sky got dark and the wind started howling, and we got the heck out of dodge if you know what I mean.  Ride like the wind I tell you…and the wind was blowing seriously fast.

I saw this picture last night that a friend linked on facebook of the storm here in town.  It was taken about 10 minutes from where I live.

Ummm…. now listen, I don’t know a thing about tornadoes except what I’ve seen on Extreme Weather on the Weather Channel or on the movie “Terrible Tuesday” that I watched several times in school growing up, but isn’t that sort of how tornadoes start?  And whether it is or not, I’d just like to say that I live in South Carolina because we don’t have storms like people do out in places like Kansas and Oklahoma….and I like that about South Carolina.  But perhaps we do have storms sort of like that…actually, apparently we do.

Last week when I was in Montana there were storms in town with over 80 mph straight-line winds.  I’d never even heard of straight-line winds until a friend told me that they took out 17 trees in her yard and completely rearranged the furniture at her neighborhood pool.  Look what they did to my yard too.  I guess I’m lucky to just have one tree casualty….still, look where this thing fell. 

(Yes that is directly between the 2 play sets in my yard.  Um…. I’m a little uncomfortable with that.  And the fact that it was entirely uprooted.)

And then last night I also heard of a roof blowing directly off of a building into the middle of a major road.  This does not happen here.  Oh yeah, and when we were coming back from our trip the other night, there was a billboard at our exit that was bent into a 90 degree angle.  Just wrapped around the pole, like it was a piece of cardboard that someone flicked too hard.

All to say, it’s weird.  And did you know that apparently one of Saturn’s moons lost a ring recently too?  Yeah…random tidbit I learned from a friend who knows tidbits like that.  And I can’t help but really wonder to myself…how do you know when it really is the “end times?”  I mean, the Bible says we won’t know the exact date and time of Jesus’ return, but it does say that things can get weirder beforehand.  I don’t claim to know at all ya’ll, but I do wonder.  And in the end, what I do know is that however weird and weathery it gets here, when He comes back…I for one am going with Him.

PS. For fear that you all begin think I’m some freaky end times theologian or something…I just want to say “stop right there.  I’m not.”  Surely though, I’m not the only person wondering what in the world is going on with the world? And with the weather?